Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  Nevertheless, up and down the coast, from Chile to the last Spanish settlement in Mexico, there was but one name for Drake. He was the corsair, the pirate, a man of the lowest birth. Don Miguel de Eraso y Aguilar, General of the land army of the Indies, wrote to King Philip in Spain:

  “It is a thing that terrifies one, this voyage and the boldness of this low man, the son of vile parents, for it is said that his father was a shoemaker. Yet it is a positive and accomplished fact that he undertook that navigation....”

  The outraged General tried to console himself and Philip by the reflection that it was a Portuguese pilot who carried Drake through the swirling currents of the Straits of Magellan. But he made a poor job of it and relapsed upon lamentations.

  “There is nothing more for him to plunder, since he has made such a good haul....It appears that the two vessels which were despatched by the Viceroy to chase him, overtook him but made no attempt to attack him,” and then comes an unwilling cry of admiration: “I am confident that if these had been English ships, they would not have turned back without first reconnoitring and seizing an opportunity to attack him.”

  It was natural enough that no one but Drake’s prisoners should have a good word for him in that part of the world. The safe treasure vault at the back of beyond, so safe that no one had given a thought to its protection, had been reached and then rifled without the exchange of a cannon-shot. And what Drake had now done, others would follow and do again. There was no swift-sailing “Indian Guard” on the waters of the Pacific. Messengers rode up and down the coast from Viceroy of Peru to Viceroy of New Spain, from Licentiate of Panama to Lieutenant-Governor of Costa Rica, all of them with warnings, and all of them too late. The pirate had come and gone. Drake had another point of view which he expounded with a pleasant humour to San Juan de Anton, the owner of his greatest prize. He served first his Queen, who had a long unpaid bill against King Philip for injuries received. Secondly, Philip’s Viceroy at St. John de Ulua had broken his pledged word, by which John Hawkins and himself had lost a great fortune and three hundred Englishmen their lives. He was sorry if he took the money of private people, but he had to get every stiver of that fortune back. In fact, he looked upon King Philip as one who had for ten years been his Treasurer, and now King Philip must look upon Drake as his. And at the back of all the jesting there remained the demand: if Philip wanted these attacks to cease, let him give English people the right to trade with the people of his possessions and cease from his tortures and imprisonments.

  A year after this year of 1579, Philip flung without any warning an army into Ireland. At another date he had seized without warning every English ship in a Spanish harbour. It was warfare undeclared — a practice which seems to have revived in the present day. But this is clear. If there was one pirate, there were two, and Drake was infinitely the more compassionate of the pair.

  “He killed no one,” Domingo de Lizarza, clerk on San Juan de Anton’s ship Nuestra Señora de la Concepcion, deposed before the Royal Court of Panama. “On the sixth day of March he released them, giving them San Juan de Anton’s said ship so that they could go their way. He killed no one.” Nicolas Jorge, a Fleming who was Drake’s prisoner for a month, tells the same story. “He did not kill anyone whatsoever. On the contrary, he treated them well and kept the said ship with him for five days and then released her with all the persons he had seized, and deponent came with them.” Throughout this section of Drake’s voyage only two men were killed, and both were of Drake’s crew: Richard Minivy on land close to Coquimbo by Spanish soldiers, and an unnamed sailor of a boarding party in the harbour of Callao. A few were wounded on both sides from time to time; and perhaps one man could bring a true charge of ill-treatment, Francisco Jacome, clerk of the ship of Benito Diaz Bravo which was captured off the Quiximies on the last day of February. Jacome was taken on board the Golden Hind and charged with hiding gold in a secret part of the ship. When he continued to declare that he could reveal nothing, since he had hidden nothing, “they hanged him by the neck with a rope, as though to hang him outright and let him drop from high into the sea, from which they fetched him out with the launch and took him back to the ship on which he had come.” He was not much hurt by this experience and, regarded as a piece of brutality, it pales into insignificance when it is compared with the punishments inflicted upon British seamen of the Royal Navy at a much later date.

  On the other hand, Drake’s deeds of kindness were manifold. The presents which he made to the owners of the ships he took are not, however, to be counted amongst them. A silver box to San Juan de Anton, an ornamental sword to Don Francisco de Zárate, an embroidered cloak to another — these were no more than gestures of politeness, goods of so much greater value he had already lifted from their ships. “I can assure your Excellency that he lost nothing by the bargain,” Don Francisco wrote ruefully to the Viceroy, after Drake had taken four chests full of fine China dishes and a good store of taffeta and linen and silk. “Trifles,” Drake called them, “for his wife.” But to the sailors he gave handfuls of money and, what was of more value in those distant provinces, agricultural instruments. He was easily approached and by genuine needs easily moved.

  Here are two instances. Drake took from the ship of Rodrigo Tello at the island of Caño to the south of Nicaragua two pilots in the service of Spain. They were on their way to Panama with their charts, there to take charge of an expedition to China. Drake had not at that time made up his mind by which route he would strike for home. There was the lure in the north of the fabled north-east passage of Anian. There was the obvious way by China and the Philippines. He told, therefore, one of these pilots, Alonzo Sanchez Colchero, a native of Seville, that he must keep him, for though he himself could navigate his ship in the open seas, he knew nothing of the coastline of China or the islands, where there were harbours, where fresh water was to be found. Colchero protested first that he was no pilot — this statement, with good reason, was disallowed; secondly, that he had a wife who would not know what had become of him; thirdly, that she had no money. Drake promised to land him on the Philippines with a thousand ducats in his pocket (about three hundred and fifty pounds of our money), gave him fifty pesos now to send off to his wife, and allowed him besides to write to the Viceroy of New Spain and the Licentiate Palacios a statement that he was detained on the Golden Hind by force. And a few days later, when this was done, he put him back on Francisco de Zárate’s ship and let him go.

  Again, from the ship of Gregorio Alvarez off Paita he took a negro. This negro was a Cimaroon, and of those inhabitants of Vallano Drake had the liveliest memories; so well had they served him on Darien and at Nombre de Dios. A sailor on the Golden Hind told San Juan de Anton that the Cimaroons were “brothers of Captain Francis, and that they had much affection for him.” Now Drake had lost at La Mocha the Cimaroon Diego who had been his servant, and it is probable that he intended to put this new negro in his place. The man, however, did not want to stay. His master was old, too old to be left. Accordingly, when San Juan de Anton was standing on the deck, waiting for the launch which was to put him back, the negro flung himself upon his knees in front of Drake and begged him to have mercy upon him and send him away with Anton. Drake replied:

  “Since thou wishest to go, thou canst go with God’s blessing, for I do not wish to take anyone with me against his will”; and he handed the negro over to Anton with a request that he would send the man back to his master.

  These were not odd moments of kindness, such as may happen in the lives of the sourest of men. For the numerous records which have been brought to light in Spain and Mexico of men who were for a few days captives on the Golden Hind again and again bear testimony to the kindliness of the General’s disposition. Drake was almost as far removed from the morose acerbity of Magellan as he was from the burnt-cork of Captain Teach. He had a hobby, too, to keep him sweet. He painted — he and young John Drake. They made charts of the coast in colours, they illustrated their books wi
th pictures. The day’s work being over, the pair of them would shut themselves away in their cabin under the poop; and they painted well. It is a pleasant picture for us to paint, however badly, with such brushes as our imagination can provide us. This morning they had left Callao behind them. In two days, three days, they would overhaul Nuestra Señora de la Concepcion. Forward in the bows the crew, with the exception of the watch, sprawled upon the deck asleep. It was afternoon and all was very quiet. Even the ship snored as she ran over summer seas before a steady breeze, the great stern turning over the water to right and left and leaving behind her a silver wake. In the cabin the big stern windows stand open, the south-west wind plays about the walls; and the boy and the man sit painting. The boy with the delight in a ship at his heart and not a foreboding of the dark fate which in a few years was to hide him away for ever from his friends; the man stopping from time to time with a smile upon his lips to see the future like an obsequious valet opening door after door upon wider and more glittering worlds.

  CHAPTER XI

  ADVENTURES ALONG THE COAST OF PERU. CAPTURE OF THE “CACAFUEGO.” DRAKE’S PLAN TO SETTLE COLONIES AND RETURN BY THE NORTH-EAST PASSAGE.

  THE GOLDEN HIND left the island of Mocha on the afternoon of November 27th. With so many of her crew wounded, her need of fresh food and fresh water was greater than ever. She laid her course, therefore, towards the coast, keeping a look-out for her consort, the Elizabeth, and for any likely watering-place on the Main. On the 30th she dropped her anchor in Philip’s Bay in 32° south latitude. Philip’s Bay is now the Bay of Quintero, lying about fifteen miles north of Valparaiso. Drake sent a boat to the shore, but it found after a long search neither the water nor the vegetables which were wanted. Herds of wild buffalo, however, were seen, and in a corner of the bay an Indian in a canoe fishing. The Indian was towed to the ship’s side, given presents, informed by signs what the ship’s needs were, and shown more presents in the case that he could fulfil them. The Indian was a tall gentle creature clad in one white short cloth, very grateful for the gifts made to him and very curious about the devices of the ship. He was then towed back to the land and by gestures asked the boat’s captain to await his return. In a few hours he came aboard again with the chief of his tribe and a load of hens, eggs, a fat hog and other provisions.

  There was nothing more to be got from that spot, but the Indian indicated that the ship had overrun a port where all Drake’s requirements could be satisfied, and that he himself would willingly come as pilot. Drake gladly accepted the offer. A round-up of the buffaloes, planned whilst the boat’s crew waited ashore, was abandoned, and on December 4th the Golden Hind turned back towards the south. On the 5th she stood in to the harbour of Valparaiso, and Valparaiso, the port of Santiago the capital of Chile, lay as completely at Drake’s mercy as a rabbit at the mercy of a python.

  It was noon. Ahead of the Golden Hind lay a ship of a hundred and twenty tons, the property of the Licentiate Torres. She was named La Capitana de Moriel, for she had been the leader of the first expedition to the Solomon Islands with Pedro Sarmiento, a famous pilot, in command. She was on a commercial voyage now to Peru with a mixed cargo of wine and gold and a crew of fifteen or sixteen hands. No suspicion was aroused by the appearance of Drake’s ship. What else could she be but a Spanish ship from Callao or Panama? On La Capitana a drum was beaten to welcome her. Drake manned a boat with eighteen men armed with arquebuses, bows and shields — he was falling into no ambush this time. As the boat put off, a cask of wine was brought up on to the deck of La Capitana and broached; and the first knowledge they had that the entertainment was one in which they were to take no part reached them when Thomas Moone climbed over the bulwark, cried “Abajo, perro!” (“Down, dog!”) to the first sailor who greeted him, and cracked him over the pate with a stick. The crew was driven below and locked up. Then Drake himself was sent for. He placed a guard upon La Capitana and sent a force on shore to take possession of what gold there was.

  Valparaiso then was a mere settlement of nine cottages and a few storehouses. The inhabitants to a man had followed the honoured policy of bolting to the hills. There was no resistance, but on the other hand there was no gold. Cask upon cask of wine, yes, and salt pork, and flour and lard and suet, and plank upon plank of cedar-wood. Drake’s crew took all that was wanted for a long voyage, and the cedar-wood for their fires. Drake himself went on shore, and finding a small chapel, despoiled it of a silver chalice, two cruets and an altar-cloth; which he presented as gifts to the chaplain, Fletcher. He removed the pilot Juan Griego with his charts and two other members of the crew from La Capitana to the Golden Hind, and the rest he sent on shore. He replaced them with a prize crew of twenty-five from his own ship, and at noon on Saturday, December 6th, just twenty-four hours after he had sailed into Valparaiso, he sailed out again with La Capitana beside him. Drake had invented a prudent method of dealing with his prizes. He avoided the risk of an unexpected attack whilst he was transferring their cargoes in a harbour. He sailed straight out into the open sea, and only when he was far from land and safe from molestation set about this work. From La Capitana he took seventeen hundred jars of wine — all the witnesses agree upon that generous contribution to the amenities of the Golden Hind. But accounts of the treasure taken vary. Don Luis de Toledo, the Viceroy and Captain-General of Peru, put it at fourteen hundred thousand pesos of gold, which would give more than four and a half million pounds as its value today. But as the Spanish judges and deponents exaggerated Drake’s iniquities, so they magnified the profits which those iniquities brought to him. Pedro Sarmiento is the safer guide, and he declares that the gold upon La Capitana amounted to twenty-four thousand pesos and was so entered in the register of its Master, Hernando Lamero. Even then, eleven thousand pounds or so in the finest Valdivian gold was a satisfactory haul as a beginning; and to this must be added a large crucifix of gold studded with emeralds, on which was nailed a gold effigy of Christ. Drake carried the Spanish ship along with him until he was off Lima, when he cast her adrift with her sails set.

  Drake’s first care was to carry back his Indian fisherman to the bay where he had picked him up. He put on land a very happy Indian loaded with presents, and continued northwards, sailing with Juan Griego’s help close inshore and expecting at any moment to see in some secluded creek the masts of the Elizabeth towering above a rock.

  He was now by two and a half degrees nearer to the Line than the appointed rendezvous, and on this unknown coast he might easily have overshot his consort. He carried, however, a pinnace in parts on board the Golden Hind, and this pinnace would be able at once to make a more thorough search of the creeks and estuaries than the big ship itself could do, and to protect the men who sailed it from an attack from the shore. Moreover, the Golden Hind had been long at sea without an overhaul; the fifty-two days of ferocious storm had strained her; and she was now leaking. Drake carried with him carpenters and caulkers and all the requisites for repairing his ship. He needed a secluded harbour where he could put his pinnace together, depart in her in search of the Elizabeth, and leave the Golden Hind to be careened and freshly caulked in his absence.

  Drake thought that he had found such a spot at La Herradura. He sailed into the bay with La Capitana behind him, and anchored in six fathoms of water. He sent a man up into the crow’s nest to keep a watch on the land, and then despatched a boat on shore to find water and provisions. The boat was moored to a rock close to the land, and its crew had already taken a couple of pigs and six pipes of fresh water when a shot was heard and the man in the crow’s nest saw a large body of Spanish horsemen with Indians running behind them. They were coming over the crest of a low hill. A signal was made from the ship. The water-party saw it and raced for the rock to which their boat was moored. One man, however, Richard Minivy, loitered behind, some said in a spirit of bravado, others in a spirit of sacrifice to cover the retreat of his friends. The Spaniards and the Indians together numbered at the smallest computation two hund
red and fifty armed men. Richard Minivy was killed by a bullet from an arquebus; and as the boat’s crew rowed away into safety it was given the opportunity of witnessing one more example of their enemy’s brutality. The Spaniards decapitated Minivy, then cut his heart out and finally left his trunk upon the sand, pierced through and through with arrows. It was not left, however, to provide a meal for the carrion birds. Later on that day, when there was no sound but the cries of the gulls to break the silence, Drake sent the boat back again and gave to their comrade a decent burial.

  “This being not the place we looked for, nor the entertainment such as we desired,” wrote Parson Fletcher, “we speedily got hence again.” And ninety miles to the north, on December 22nd, near to the Island of Birds, Drake discovered the place of which he was in search, Bahia Salada, a pleasant wide bay with a sandy beach, with no habitations for miles around but a few Indian huts. It was so stocked with fish that the gentlemen with four or five lines could catch as many as four hundred in three hours. Since, however, the gentlemen had now to hale and draw with the mariners, they had not so much time upon their hands. The pinnace was put together on the deck of La Capitana de Moriel, and she was launched into the water on January 9th. One of the smaller cannons was mounted upon her, and with a picked crew Drake sailed southwards again on the evening of January 10th, in a last endeavour to find the lost adventurers. But the wind still blew from the south-west, and after beating into it for a day and a night Drake abandoned the search and returned to the anchorage.